Twitter’s impact on media and journalism
June 8th, 2009 • all posts
On 23 June I will be speaking at an event held in Sydney by fledgling (but innovative) Australian events company The Insight Exchange on the impact of Twitter on media and journalism.
The full panel of speakers for the event hasn’t been confirmed yet, but at least two other speakers will be there; futurist, inventor, writer and educator Mark Pesce (you might have seen him on the ABC television show The New Inventors) and Paul Colgan, managing editor of News Ltd’s new Australian site The Punch.
The event will discuss such weighty matters as whether Twitter is journalism (my opinion: it is) and how the new medium is impacting the way traditional media providers capture and deliver the news (my opinion: it and other online technologies are renewing our society’s journalism, which had stagnated).
To be honest, I’m really looking forward to this event. In my opinion, it’s hard to underestimate the profound impact that Twitter is currently having on Australia’s media, and society in general, and we need more such events where we can debate the associated issues.
I haven’t worked through my comments in full yet (and no, I’m definitely not going to use PowerPoint slides), but I know where I’m going to start.
My comments will start from the perspective that fundamentally, journalists are not simply “using” Twitter to promote their own work and get news tips. This is nowhere near to being the whole truth.
In fact, audiences are using Twitter as a powerful tool to engage with journalists directly and force a renewal of journalism and media along lines that audiences have long demanded.
Some journalists, generally the ones who see themselves as the servants of their audiences rather than their masters, have started to ride that wave of audience power as a means of reinvigorating their publications through community energy.
Others (and sometimes entire media outlets) are foolhardedly trying to stem the tide or react in traditional ways.
Over the past year I’ve been engaging strongly with Twitter and have developed a strong (almost 2,000!) following of mostly Australian Twitter users, most of whom use technology in some way in their professional lives.
In my speech I’ll try and tease out some of the ways in which that community is impacting on, and in may ways guiding my own work. Stay tuned for the full speech, which I’ll post here after the event.
An execllent write-up with correct points, I have been a lurker here for a while but hope to be a lot more involved in the foreseeable future.